The present invention relates generally to managing memory by a computer processor, and more specifically, to determining the state of blocks or regions of memory.
In modern computer systems, memory use is accomplished by a limited set of algorithms that manage the use of memory blocks or sections. Such functions include pre-fetch functions and memory allocation functions that manage memory to select blocks that are available for storage in response to input of data to memory and/or requests of data from various devices (e.g., CPUs, virtual machines, control units, external devices or users, etc.). Memory management operations include memory assignment operation, initialization operations, data movement operations (e.g., paging) and others.